Subaru woke up with his right hand tangled in something soft and silky, but with a terrible neckache. His head was propped sideways at an odd angle on his pillow, and he opened his eyes to discover that he was staring at a wall. In his left hand, he felt that he was clutching a parchment rolled up into a scroll, but his right arm was slightly numb. He scrunched his eyes up in a squint at the bright light of the room and blinked away the morning crust, taking in a deep breath and realizing with a large degree of fondness that the room smelled like Rem's finely tuned, professional, yet uniquely floral maidly scent. He curled his right hand and blinked when the silky feeling hair gave way to the solid feeling of something with elastic skin and... braided lace? He opened his eyes wide to look down and was immediately assaulted by an eyeful of bright blue hair. His fingers were scrunched up in a blue head of medium length hair. He was lying on his side and holding Rem's head to his chest, the hand with the scroll in it lying over her waist and keeping her scrunched in close.
Subaru panicked, blushed until his cheeks were dark red, and dropped the scroll on the floor beside the bed, letting go of his grip on her head and untangling himself from her immaculately... messy hair. Her hair was all over the place. She looked really cute that way, actually, blissfully asleep with her light blue hair splayed all over her face. He reached down and patted it down as best he could, but it turned into a comforting brushing of her hair with his fingers as the events of the night came back to him. They had been up late with him recounting everything to her that he could remember, and they hadn't even gotten through half of everything he had been through.
After he comforted her when she had found out that she had previously tortured and killed him, he had foregone telling her the small details and instead favored getting the major events out of the way first to get any possibly jarring, saddening, or angering details finished in one go. She, being emotional but socially stunted as a result of her upbringing and continued lack of confronting her past, had clung to the chance to trust someone even before he had accidentally brought her back in time. Last night she displayed that trust by accepting his comfort, and then she wouldn't let go of his jacket, afraid he would leave her alone.
Eventually, he ventured, he must have rolled up the parchment assuming they wouldn't get any writing done in that position, but he never managed to stand up. They must have fallen asleep talking about his resets, they were both so tired.
Subaru relaxed. She was sound asleep, lightly snoring into his chest even after he had let go of her. He sighed. She really was quite cute that way, but it was a shame that he would have to wake her up before everyone else in the mansion realized that she was missing from her morning duty. As it was, she would already have to come up with some excuse to her sister, who would undoubtedly be suspicious anyway.
He shook her by the shoulder with his left hand, his right arm still stuck under her head. She scrunched her face up in a way that made her look decidedly human, what with him being used to her being so calm and composed, and then squeaked. Clearing his throat to avoid breaking into laughter, he shook her again. This time he was rewarded with a small "mmh" noise as she fluttered her eyes open. She had the decency, at least, to look confused as she stared at a wall of black cloth and the orange lapel of his jacket. He watched her blink the bleariness out of her eyes and then she looked up at him from his chest with big, round, blue eyes.
"Oh," Subaru thought, "That's why the guys back home like hugging so much."
"Subaru-kun?" she asked in a soft voice.
"Ah... Hi?" he intelligently replied, blinking as she looked down at his chest again seemingly in confusion, then lightly blushed back up at him. He at least had the presence of mind to prop himself up on an elbow, separating them on the bed.
"Good morning, Subaru-kun. Did Rem fall asleep on you? Rem is sorry to be a burden," she responded, also propping herself up, but more delicately on her hand. Somehow she made it seem proper, despite her cutely ruffled hair, disheveled maid outfit, and pleasant blush.
"Ah, no, uh... Not at all. That is, it's fine. I mean, you weren't a burden. I mean, actually it was kind of nice. But not in that way! I mean, in that way but not in the other way, and..." Subaru trailed off and coughed into his free hand, smiling as he watched Rem bring her own hand up and giggle into it uncharacteristically.
"Subaru-kun is silly when he's flustered," she teased from behind her hand. His smile turned into a self-deprecating grin that he usually wore when he made fun of himself to lighten up the mood of the room and he scratched the back of his head with his free hand.
"Yeah, well, Subaru is silly most of the time. Subaru doesn't hear Rem complaining about it," he shot back, imitating her verbal tic. She laughed behind her hand again and then let it drop, her smile rewarding him for picking on her successfully.
"Never. Rem likes it when Subaru-kun makes a fool of himself," she jeered good-naturedly. He guffawed, not expecting her to insult him even though the first time he met her in the mansion she implied he was a filthy pervert.
"Subaru-kun is happy that Rem is so pleased, and will endeavor to make a fool of himself more often, if it pleases the lady," he said with as much conviction as he had ever said anything in his entire life, probably more convincingly than he thought if the tingly laugh it got out of the previously barely composed maid was any indication.
"Please, good sir, Subaru-kun mustn't try too hard or he might hurt himself," she returned once she recovered.
"I like to think I'm not that bad, but then I remember that I cut myself over a dozen times trying to peel my first potato," he said, holding his hand up as if to show off the scars, which obviously didn't exist. The reminder of the resets put an end to the back and forth banter and their good mood simmered down to a mutual feeling of comfort even if the sudden remembrance of their shared burden had been reintroduced to stress them. He kept a small, comfortable smile on his face, the normal bags under his eyes lightened by an apparently very relaxing rest. The smile she gave him in return was hard for him to read, but he didn't have long to contemplate it.
"Subaru-kun?" she broke him out of his thoughts by asking.
"Hmm?" he replied, tilting his head a degree or two. He widened his eyes in surprise when she leaned forward and left a chaste, polite kiss on his left cheek, her soft lips feeling like fire on his skin. They lingered there for a second or two before she separated, her face only moving back an inch or two, smiling demurely as if she knew something that he didn't. His hand came up and rested on his cheek where her lips had once been.
"Thank you," she near-whispered. Her voice was unfathomable. He couldn't parse it in his distracted state, but it was too sweetly affectionate for him to be able to make heads or tails of it, being a young man. His mind filled with fuzz for a moment before he came to a startling realization.
"Oh shit," he realized in his head, "We were flirting, weren't we? And she just kissed me, didn't she? Oh shit!"
It was this scene that was on full display, Rem's face mere centimeters away from Subaru's, her hair ruffled to oblivion, her maid outfit tussled, her headband askew, his face clearly both confused and blissful, when Ram opened the door and took a step back in barely contained shock.
Then, when Subaru turned his head to look at her, she blinked, grew furious as she came to all of the wrong conclusions (and some of the right ones) and then raised a hand, which started to glow.
"Shit."
Subaru woke up with his right hand tangled in something soft and silky, but with a terrible neckache. This time he gasped out loud and then looked around the room frantically before his eyes landed back on the head of blue hair from his previous life. He shook her awake in short order this time, pushing past her squeak of displeasure and heading straight towards having her up and looking around. She blinked away her bleariness again, even more confused now than she had been the first time, until she looked up at his face and her eyes widened.
"Subaru-kun! The door opened and Subaru looked so scared! His head just... flew back and then Rem saw only black. What happened?" she asked feverishly, looking a little sickly. Subaru, on the other hand, felt a grin spread across his face nearly from ear to ear. It was so flashy a smile that Rem's face automatically reverted back to a small smile just at the sight of it.
"We just confirmed something important about the resets. When I die, we both go back to the reset point and remember everything that happened! This is great news! I thought that you might just do what you did in the other timeline and forget everything from in between deaths. Rem-rin, we can use this!" he got progressively more excited as he went on, and from the looks of it it was infectious as Rem's smile grew too.
"Then... Rem really can help Subaru-kun all the way through? Subaru-kun truly isn't alone anymore?" she asked hopefully, grabbing his hand in her more delicate ones.
"Not only that, Rem-rin, but I've got so much company I don't know what to do with it! We can do and talk about things that we've never done or talked about before! I can meet you in a part of the mansion without knowing where you are! My life isn't all so planned anymore and it's... Well, it's all because you're here," he started off excited but finished softly.
The bright smile she gave him in response was the best thing he'd seen the entire time he'd spent in this new world. Emilia-tan? Emilia-tan who? She was nowhere near his mind.
Satella and the Witch sat in a deadlock once more, both jealous of the other for the other's attention on Subaru. Their shared, conflicted magic kept a close "eye" on him, though, and they both felt something discordant in the Return by Death. Satella was triumphant, despite her subdual by the Witch after successfully changing the curse, and the Witch had been brutal in her wrestling for control over their magic. That discordant note sang of hope for Satella on one hand, but at the same time, Satella couldn't help but feel forlorn at the sour undertone that it whispered in her ear. The Witch heard both as well, and in fury at the undertone which suggested sinister things about her Subaru, she launched herself into the struggle against her counterpart.
"Still," Subaru said after a few seconds, "We should probably figure out a way out of this situation before Ram shows up and kills me again."
The casual way in which he said this struck a chord with Rem, who took in a sharp breath but then righted herself again and nodded. She sat up and patted down her hair with help from her companion, the touch of whom from which she took a great deal of secret delight. He straightened her headband and helped her unruffle her maid outfit, then playfully shoved her out of the bed and onto her feet. She gave him a small glare and turned back to him, hesitating for a moment before leaning down again.
"It would be better for Subaru-kun's plan to retrace our steps so Subaru-kun and Rem know what to change when it goes wrong," she said as a clever but somewhat flimsy excuse, planting a soft kiss on his cheek again before slipping silently out of the room. Subaru's eyes followed her out, his mind fuzzy again. When he regained his bearings, it was only for long enough to stand up and stretch his arms out before he heard soft footsteps outside of the room.
He had enough time to drop the parchment that he hadn't let go this time and punt it under his desk before the door opened and Ram took one step inside before stopping and blinking at the sight of a grown, young adult male in an "I just kicked a ball so hard it broke orbit" stance.
Subaru over his shoulder at her, let his foot hit the floor, and then chuckled nervously.
"Hi?"
